Over the years, athletic hosiery has developed to a highly specialized industry. Athletic hosiery includes socks, footlets, and various customized footwear for athletic purposes. Athletic hosiery often has specialized as well into developing, for example, particular types of socks for certain athletic endeavors. Particular types of socks exist for basketball, soccer, hockey, football, baseball, trekking, tennis, golf, and racketball. These socks are often either a knee- high variety, a calf-high variety, or footlet variety.
A recurring problem exists, however, particularly with knee-high and calf-high type athletic socks which are often used in sports such as soccer or football. The leg of the sock has trouble staying up over the calf of the leg especially during heavy running, jumping, sliding, or other exercises where the lower extremity or leg musculature is used. Elastic in the leg of the sock often deforms or stretches out of shape quickly from the exercise or from multiple machine washings. The movement of the calf muscle itself and the body of the user also often cause the leg of the sock to slide off of the wearer's calf or collapse around the wearer's ankle. Perspiration, various wet weather conditions or playing environments, and physical contact of the legs with other athletes additionally add to the collapse of the leg of the sock or cause the leg of the sock to slide off of the calf.
To remedy the situation, athletic sock wearers often use tape to support the leg portion of the sock. Because of the flexing and movement of the leg muscles of the sock wearer during an athletic event, however, some tape cannot be re-adjusted once it has been applied. The tape then often has to be reapplied several times during each game. In order to support the sock, tape is typically applied too tightly which can also cut off or greatly inhibit effective blood circulation to the legs and feet of a wearer. Tape further can have problems when it looses its adhesiveness during certain types of wet and/or cold weather.
Rubber bands also have been used for numerous years around the leg portion of a sock to support the leg portion of the sock on the wearer's leg. A wearer, for example, slips the loop or band of rubber over the toe portion of the sock, advances the loop up the leg portion of the sock, and advances the loop to upper peripheries of the leg portion of the sock. Also like tape, however, rubber bands cannot be readily adjusted, often break, and additionally can cut off or greatly inhibit blood circulation to an athlete's legs and feet.
Garters have conventionally been used for ladies knit hose, dress socks, and uniform-type socks over the years. These garters include a strap having a pair of fasteners for securing respective ends of the strap. Examples of such garters can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,501,774 by Norman titled "Garter" and U.S. Pat. No. 1,599,011 by Hohn titled "Sock Suspender, Garter, Or The Like." Conventional garters, however, have several problems. Some of these garters are not constructed and are not practical for use even with socks, e.g., only ladies knit hose. These garters also, for example, can be secured tightly around a user's leg and cut off blood circulation to the user's lower extremities. This is particularly important in athletic events where the legs of the user are heavily used, e.g., soccer, baseball, football.
These conventional garters also have not been generally accepted for athletic use for a variety of reasons including that these conventional garters fail to account for heavy athletic use where perspiration, inclement weather conditions, heavy calf muscle flexing, and heavy physical contact regularly occur. Additionally, different athletes have different sized calf muscles or legs and a different sized garter is often required for each person. Because during athletic use the straps of the garters can be stretched out of shape or deformed with little or no recovery characteristics, the construction of the conventional garter is not practical or reliable for athletic events. Further, during active athletic events and in sync with the activity, athletes often need to quickly and yet securely make adjustments to a garter because of the perspiration, muscle flexing, and other changes in the position of the sock and movement of the leg.